ANIMAL SERIES(MEDIUM)

Animal series – Minju Park, Sojin Kwon, Youngchul Park, and Jaehyun Kim

Castoff plastic toy animals are the object as well as an inspiration for this art project. The project started when photographer and art director Cheeho Zeong, who usually pays attention to unwanted things and collects miscellaneous items that seem useless but have its uses, came across these castoff animal figures in a flea market and wondered how he could revive them. The project evolved to making mini table lamps for these little animals to be placed underneath.

Once discarded toy animals now come to life to be like actors posing on stage in the spotlight, while they underwent a further transformation following the creator’s new idea – setting lighting inside the figures. Through the process of perforating the head part of figures and implanting custom-made LED lighting, those animal figures have now become lighting devices themselves. The whole process of the project is like breathing fresh life into things that were once dead. In the process of changing a thing that is deemed useless into something useful, another possibility presented itself and led to artworks.

After mulling over ways to practically use these artworks in daily life, Zeong teamed up with other established artists to make other more animal figures and create various products such as ‘walrus lamp’ and ‘penguin tray’. Starting from a heap of castoff toy animals, things have transformed into entirely new creations in this project, which can be seen as a piece of performance art in a broad sense.